


Gutcheck

by ahimsabitches



Category: Trollhunters (Cartoon)
Genre: Blood, Gore, Miscarriage, Other, Pregnancy, basically this is all terrible, fighting. so much fighting, i needed to beat the shit out of my OC, i was.... going through some stuff and, mention of breeding, mention of incest, mention of rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 10:41:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16931760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahimsabitches/pseuds/ahimsabitches
Summary: Forget about winning and losing; forget about pride and pain. Let your opponent graze your skin and you smash into his flesh; let him smash into your flesh and you fracture his bones; let him fracture your bones and you take his life! Do not be concerned with escaping safely- lay your life before him!" ~Bruce Lee





	Gutcheck

Like a pride of dozy lionesses waking to a warning call, all four changelings raised their heads. Ravga who would be Dredda, oldest, broadest and strongest, scented the air with delicately flaring nostrils but could smell nothing but the rotting stone and old air of the Darklands. Hrunn, her hide inky like the stone around them and her hair pale like starlight, was first to untangle herself from the pile in which they slept, facing out into the chamber in which they made their home. The other three rose beside her, ears pricked forward and glowing eyes strained into the green-tinged dark ahead of them.

A half instant before Ravga smelled her, Dulgoa, tall and lithe and viper-fanged, breathed “Ismar”, and three heads turned as one to cast the spotlight of their eyes on Ravga.

Ravga's belly dropped. Flicking her own yellow-glowing eyes between her sisters’, Ravga heard the first rhythmic pounding footfalls. Her heart began to gallop. Fear leaked down her spine in an icy ooze. One by one, she watched her sisters' faces grow blank as they did what they had done last time Ismar had come; the last time Ismar had taken one from them. And one by one, the lights in their eyes whirled away. Ravga whirled with them, her mouth open to call them, but their names died in her throat.

Dzra's screams had not stopped Ismar from coming. They had not stopped Ravga and her sisters from unmooring Dzra's existence from their minds with instant finality. They had not stopped Dzra from dying.

_Hide hide hide_

The compulsion tightened around the base of her brain and she spun in a circle, panic frothing in her veins as the thunder of Ismar’s footfalls grew nearer.

_Must hide must hide_

She could not join her sisters under the dark lip of rock where they had taken shelter; Ravga was no longer one of them. They would force her out, into Ismar's waiting teeth.

Ismar’s growl shivered the stone beneath Ravga’s feet, and suddenly she knew what to do. She darted to the place where the craggy stone wall was most ragged, right where it began its inward curve to become the division between their living quarters and Dictatious’ lab beyond. Scaling the brutally jagged wall was light work for Ravga's panic-tightened muscles, already well-strung from the experimental battles she'd fought at Dictatious' command. Double-height above even Gunmar’s horn-level, she crammed herself into a fold of rock absent the dimly pulsing veins of sick green light that grew like infection in the Darklands.

Precious seconds later, Ismar shouldered aside the darkness and came to stillness in the middle of the chamber. Smaller only by inches than her father, the Trollsbane swung her mighty head, crowned by a set of thickly curling horns, in a slow arc around the chamber. Her eyes and swirling, cracked tattoos glowed an identical shade of blue. Her father’s blue. She reached over her left shoulder for the sword sheathed over her humped back.

Ravga screwed her eyes shut to block out their glow and wiggled further into the cleft. _Heart slow breath slow please go away heart slow please go away heart slow please breath slow please go aw--_

 _CLAAANNNNGGG_ \-- the sound of metal striking stone detonated in the chamber and pealed throughout the neighboring ones. _CLAAANNNNGGG. CLAAAAANNNNGGG._ Ravga clenched her teeth against a whimper of fear.

“Helloooo-ooo? Can the Impure come out to plaaayyy?” Ismar singsonged. Her voice was deep and pure, rolling from her chest in a register higher than her father's but just as dangerous. Her call faded into the last echoes of her sword striking the ground, and then into nothing.

Chest bellowsing like a mouse's, Ravga willed herself small and silent, small and silent, thoughtless, empty, not-there...

“Ismar? What in Gunmar's name are you doing here?”

Ravga's eyes opened reflexively at the sound of Dictatious' voice. She shut them again.

“This doesn't involve you, Dictatious,” Ismar said. Steel screeched against stone; she'd dragged her sword across the floor, doubtless to threaten the smaller troll. When Dictatious spoke again, his voice had lost its authority and half its volume.

“With all due respect, I'd say it does. The breeders are my responsibility.”

“Do me a favor, you wheedling little worm, and _fuck off._ ”

Silence painted itself on the chamber like thick tar.

“Ismar...” Dictatious began, almost too softly for Ravga to hear. Ismar growled, the rocks trembled, and Dictatious fled in a soft quick shuffle of feet.

Ravga's heart quailed.

“I know you're in here somewhere, you piece of filth,” Ismar said. “I can smell you.” Ismar's thudding footsteps neared the spot directly below where Ravga hid. She wormed further into the cleft until a sharp edge of rock threatened to slice her side. She had done her best to make herself invisible, but she could not make herself flush with the stone, nor turn her skin to black from its jade-green hue. “You and your friends.” Ismar's sounds moved toward the place where her not-sisters hid. “Maybe they'll tell me where you are.”

_No no no nonononono_

Ismar barked; one of Ravga's sisters squealed as she was hauled out from her hiding place. Ravga clenched her teeth against a sob of agony. They had uncoupled her from their minds, but she had not unbound them from her heart. She frantically pawed the stone around her, looking for a loose sharp stone, anything, _something_ , to throw. She would give herself away, but better her exposed than her sisters dead. They had done nothing wrong. Nothing had been done to them.

She twisted her arm painfully behind her to the rock that had pricked her and felt that it was loose. With her eyes still shut she torqued it until it snapped off in her hand. Risking a glance at it, she adjusted her grip to throw with the bladelike edge pointed out. Her sister-- pale-skinned Kaggi, the youngest, who would grow to be bigger than Ravga-- squealed again, Ismar's grip choking the sound.

Ravga did five things at once: she gripped a curve of stone with her left hand, leaned far out to free her arm to throw, opened her eyes, shrieked, _“Leave her alone--”_ and, as if the movement of her arm was an extension of her voice, she pitched the bladed stone at where she desperately hoped Ismar's eyes would end up once she turned her head.

For a terrible instant, the bright and murderous blue of Ismar's surprised eyes drilled into hers, and then with bitterly quick reflexes, she averted her face so that Ravga's stone bounced harmlessly off the breadth of her horn. Ismar's great head swung back, and the full-toothed grin on her face sent a returning stone straight into Ravga's heart.

Ismar opened her fist and Kaggi dropped to the stone floor. She skittered out of Ravga's view, back to her sisters. That was good.

“You're not as clever as you think you are, Impure,” Ismar said, and pointed up at the stone wall over Ravga's head with a huge clawed hand. “I wonder how that stalkling will feel when she comes back to find you threatening her eggs.” Ismar chuckled. The sound was grinding stone. Ravga risked a craning glance up and behind her.

The stalkling nest, a shallow cylinder of eyeball-sized pebbles, lay upon the ledge inches above Ravga's horns. Fear pittered up her spine on cold feet. Ismar turned into the darkness beyond them, brought her second finger and her thumb to the corners of her mouth, and blew a long, piercing whistle.

She had hunted stalklings before, in one of Dictatious' test games. But she'd had a weapon, and had not been fighting an angry female. Females were half again bigger than males, which meant this one would likely be bigger than Ravga by double. Bigger, armed with lethally sharp talons, slicing scales, and a beak like a scooped blade.

Weapons, if she could get them.

She had hunted stalklings before.

A growl forming in her chest, she backed into the crevice and crouched.

From a distance to her left, the stalkling screeched. She adjusted her grip on the stone; widened her stance, her pupils rounding from slits to disks, dimming the witchy yellow light that spilled onto her cheeks. The stalking screeched again, closer. Ravga's brain cooled into quiet black murder; her heart kicked electric adrenaline into her muscles once, again. Again.

The stalkling wheeled around the corner of the wall and Ravga exploded out of the crevice. They slammed into each other above Ismar's head. Ravga wrapped her arms around the stalkling's shoulders and her legs around its waist in a parasite grip. It squalled in surprise, backpedaling with great swipes of its leathery wings, and kicked upwards, trying to hook its talons into Ravga. But she, clinging, gave it no purchase. It struck at her head and neck with its beak, as long as Ravga's forearm, but her battering-ram horns deflected the blows. She _squeezed,_ compressing its lungs and restricting the movement of its wings at once, and sunk her mouthful of pointed teeth into its neck in a hunter's killing bite. Thick, sour blood spilled into her mouth. The stalkling screeched again, the sound vibrating Dredda's jaws. She bit harder, the labored breaths through her nose sending particles of blood back into her face, and felt the ribby cartilage of the stalkling's windpipe snap. Snarling in triumph, she released her fangs and her grip, using just enough strength to keep herself attached to the dying, shrieking, flailing mother stalkling. Battered by its wings and weakened, uncoordinated swipes of its talons, she pawed at the stalkling's face. Its beak sliced her palm; she barked as pain lanced up her arm. On her next swipe her hand landed across the top of its beak. She gripped, uncaring that it cut her again where her fingers hooked into its sharp edge, and twisted the stalkling's head like a doorknob.

The stalkling mother's last garbled shriek ended in a soft wet _crrrrck_ , and they plummeted the short distance to the stone floor.

Ravga leapt free of the tangle of scaly limbs and wings, clutching the stalkling's decapitated head by its gaping beak, and dragged the body away from Ismar.

“Hm,” the Trollsbane grunted, amusement and irritation glittering in her eyes. “You're _still_ not as clever as you think you are.” Ismar lifted her sword, its dull, pitted blade nearly as wide as Ravga. “You're on the ground now.” She took one slow, taunting step forward for two of Ravga's backward. “And my weapon is bigger than yours.”

As she backed, Ravga transferred the stalkling's beak to her mouth and began to pluck the bladelike scales from its body. She wore no clothing and thus had no pockets, so she stuck some of them through the braids her sisters had woven into her long black hair and chocked more into the greenswirled horns that reared back from her forehead and gracefully forward again to end in worn points even with her cheeks. Blades sprouted from her hair and horns in a lethal peacock-fan. Just as her back pressed up against stone, she ripped the stalkling's smaller, dagger-like bottom jaw from the top one. Top jaw and skull made a crude, bloody sword, which Ravga held by the spine. The bottom jaw, a hiltless stabbing blade, would fit very nicely into the gap in Ismar's hide plates between ribs and arm.

Ravga braced against the stone, bared her teeth, and hissed at her oncoming death.

Ismar snarled and swiped her sword in a vicious horizontal arc, intending to slice Ravga in half. Ravga, with reflexes quick enough to catch gnomes, fell forward and darted past Ismar, plunging the stalkling's bottom jaw into her ribcage.

But before she could lift her arm to stab, something slammed into her and sent her somersaulting. She rolled, regained her feet, then rolled again purposefully an instant before Ismar's sword hammered down inches to her right. It bit deep into the stone. Ravga braced her feet against it and springboarded herself into a backflip. Facing Ismar, who roared with frustration as she tried to yank her sword free of the rock, Ravga raised her hand again to throw the jaw-dagger, but it was empty. She snarled and pulled a stalkling scale from her hair and flung it instead. It bounced off Ismar's bulky, straining shoulder. Ismar's massive sword, an unmagicked replica of her father's, came free with a grinding steely squeal. She swiped it at Ravga again, lower, and Ravga leapt over it. Ismar bellowed and swung in a vicious upward diagonal. It caught Ravga as she leapt away, slicing into the side of her thigh. She squealed and stumbled, rolled again, and scrambled on all fours as Ismar chased her, cackling and swinging.

It would not be until much later in life when Ravga, then Dredda, would gain enough self awareness to realize how, during battles, hunts, or harms, her mind would fork, as a road: upon one path, utterly separate from the other, lay the pain of her wounds, the failings of spirit and quailings of heart, and the specter of her own death. Though she was aware of his path in her mind, as she was dimly aware of her blood sheeting down her leg and its refusal to take all of her weight, she never trod far down it.

Upon the other was everything that made her the strongest of her sisters, the most enduring subject of Dictatious' experiments, and the only changeling the Gumm Gumm soldiers bothered to lay bets on when Lord Gunmar ordered a sparring duel: upon this road lay the twinned root-desires of all living things: to stay living at any cost and to abandon one's life for a well-chosen cause. Upon this road lay the flight response bred into _fightfightfight_ first by her ironwilled maker and then by her ironskinned lord. Upon this road lay the bonewritten, blood-drawn, precambrian rage that drove her to return a graze of her skin with the ending of her enemy's life.

And newly upon this road was the precious thing in her belly, the tiny uncertain life that Ismar wanted to have or extinguish, and must not. _Must not._

With the hand not holding the stalkling-skull dagger, she pulled scales from her horns and threw them at Ismar. She deflected most of them with her sword, but one chipped a piece of flesh off her forearm-- inconsequential-- and one sliced neatly into the softer hide on her cheek. Ismar bellowed, the sound frayed by ill-contained fury, and swung blindly at Ravga, who spun on her good leg and used her own momentum to shoot another stalkling scale deep into Ismar's sword hand, between the second and third knuckle.

Ismar brayed but did not drop her sword. She snatched the scale out of her hand and tossed it aside. A bead of viscous black blood welled up to fill the dip between her knuckles. “You _filth!_ You sack of _shit!_ I'll make you _wish you were never made_!” Ismar punctuated each shout with a swing of her sword.

In the cool clarity of halved battlemind, the knowledge that Ismar's mind did not fork like hers settled like dew. Gunmar's daughter fought from-- _with--_ her fear and anger, and she only fought what was in front of her. This made her dangerous and unpredictable, but it also made her _stupid_.

Ravga snarled a smile.

_High ground._

Her bleeding thigh no longer paining her, Ravga bolted for the wall. Ismar had seen this before, but Ravga did not need the element of surprise. She only needed _height._

She felt the wind of Ismar's swiped paw on her foot and the wind of her frustrated roar in her hair as she climbed, the stalkling-skull dagger in her teeth. Once she reached the stalkling nest, she would--

A traitor-rock loosed itself from the wall just as she gripped it. She snatched at another, but this one was too smooth to grip. A stripe of panic lit up her skull as her left hand skittered over the stone like a lizard, unable to find purchase.

Then, she felt herself unpeeling from the wall.

She had time to watch a single thought drift almost lazily through her brain-- _oh **fuck** _\-- before she landed in Ismar's vicelike hands. They closed around her middle and immobilized her. The skull-dagger fell from her mouth.

Eyes, sparking with bright blue fury, filled her vision and stilled her struggles. Below them, Ismar's craggy face split to reveal a crooked double yellow mountain range of teeth. “Impure,” Ismar said, the dark, grinding word borne on rotten breath.

Ravga regarded her end in Ismar's teeth with detached resignation. At least she had drawn blood on the Trollsbane; at least she had protected her sisters. And at least she was her lord's favorite; at least her death would earn Ismar a scolding.

But instead of biting her head off, Ismar's great hand eclipsed her vision and Ravga suddenly felt herself dangling from Ismar's hand by her head. Pain shot up her neck and she grabbed Ismar's thick fingers. Suffocated by a heavy palm over her mouth, she mule-kicked blindly, the two roads in her mind beginning to bend towards each other.

Before she completely registered the movement, Ismar slammed her headfirst into the ground.

A torpedo of pain detonated in her head. She could do nothing but let herself be hauled into the air again, slammed into the ground again. The lone stalkling scale in her hair dug into her scalp. Again. A scale scored into her horn plunged deeper; she felt her horn crack. Again. The bottom third of her right horn snapped and dull, insignificant pain like a toothache flowed down the side of her head.

Squished between the stone and Ismar's unforgiving hand, her head screamed. Emptiness seared her lungs. Her body was miles away and made of rubber, as if dangling from Ismar's grip had stretched her like an oozing thing.

Ravga lay in her dark burning end, then suddenly the pressure on her head vanished. By itself, her body ripped a breath from the air with such force that her chest lifted from the stone. The dank, old air scorched her lungs. She rolled to her side in the pebbled crater Ismar had made with her body, and coughed out rock dust. Each movement sent rolling waves of agonizing pressure through her head, which felt made of lead and made of gas at once.

Another vise closed around her neck and she croaked a wordless shout of dismay. Ismar lifted her again, chuckling at her feeble attempts to claw at her hand. “I don't know why my father favors you, Impure. You're not special. You're just like all the rest. A weak, skulking thing. Good for nothing but mediocre service and eventual deceit.”

Blood rushed by Ravga's ears in a rhythmic ocean-roar, so she did not hear Ismar's words. She didn't need to; she knew from the rage sizzling in every line on Ismar's face. She knew because she'd heard it all before. From Ismar, from Bular. She'd heard it in the tone of Dictatious' voice; even in the detached dimness in Lord Gunmar's eyes.

But she also knew _better._ She kicked up as the stalkling had; just as the stalkling had she hit nothing. She clawed at flesh too tough for wounding; she bared impotent fangs as her throat gradually closed. She _knew_ why she was favored now, why she _mattered_. And that was _precisely_ why Ismar had come, and she would _not_ let Ismar take--

Before she completely registered the movement, Ismar tossed her into the air.

A fist as big as the world collided with Ravga's belly. It emptied it of breath and refilled it with searing agony. Ravga sailed helplessly through the air, struck the ground, bounced once, and smacked bonelessly against the wall.

She came to in Ismar's grip. Ismar cocked her arm back, and Ravga cried out, the sound ragged and plaintive.

_No not again no pl--_

Her stomach swooped almost pleasantly as Ismar cast her up; then Ismar's fist hit her like a boulder. She slammed into the ground, rolling until she came to rest on her back.

Ismar strode toward her, her footfalls punctuating her words. “Just because my father seeded you doesn't mean you're suddenly one of us, Impure. You'll never be more than what you are, and you. Are. _Filth_. You don't deserve my father's whelp. The only thing you deserve, _Impure,_ is to _die.”_

Ravga was dragged into the air again, this time by her whole horn. Her neck crackled with knifing pain; all strength had flowed out of her like water. When Ismar hit her again, a rib low on one side of her chest and one high on the other let go with a sick _twang_.

She was nothing but a knot of pain flying through the air, flopping to the stone, rolling, ending in a rubbery mess of limbs. Her body, acting without her brain, automatically rolled to the side as her ill-used guts convulsed and expelled the last of the poor meal she'd eaten hours before. Bile stung her throat. A rhythmic dagger began to stab her low in her belly. She drew her knees drew up to her chest and tucked her arms between them and her sickly throbbing guts. Something hot and wet and reeking of copper leaked from between her legs onto the inside of her thigh.

She was nothing, and now, she _had_ nothing.

The two paths in her mind converged in a brightdark fog of sorrow. The last whelp had been fragile too; it had needed no pummeling from Ismar to end itself after only one moon. And now...

A ragged sob burped from Ravga.

Five moons. This one had been healthy. Fragile, but healthy. Dictatious had hesitated to tell Lord Gunmar until after the third moon, but Ravga had convinced him to wait until the fifth, when there was a better chance that it would survive. A better chance for Ravga to please her lord. When she could stride into his throne room and he could see her rounded belly for himself. When he could see what they had created together.

Ismar's approaching footsteps vibrated the stone under Ravga's cheek, but she didn't move.

_Let her come let her bring death I failed let her come_

Something sharp nudged her ankle. Ravga barely registered it above the pain inhabiting her like a second soul. Then, a pinch like Dictatious' needles. She groaned and kicked the foot feebly.

_No more pain please just end_

“ _Ravga_ ,” a quiet voice hissed.

Ravga's eyes snapped open and her overtaxed heart kicked against her ribs. With titanic effort, she raised herself up on one elbow and gazed blearily at the dark place in the wall from where the voice had come.

Three pairs of slitted eyes-- green yellow green-- glowed in the blackness. A pale arm held something out to her: the stalkling-skull dagger.

“Kill her.” Kaggi.

“You'll have more whelps.” Hrunn.

“We all will.” Dulgoa.

“It's time for her to die.” Kaggi.

The skull-dagger fell to the floor. Kaggi's arm retreated and the lights of their eyes winked out.

Ravga stared at the darkess a moment longer, Dulgoa's words shimmering like a starlit pool in her mind: _We all will._

She stretched her unwounded leg out and grasped the dagger with her clawed foot.

 _We_ all _will._

Her sisters hadn't forgotten her, not yet. They were still bonded-- knit together by something more profound than love, something that had been transmuted over and over from the fear and pain and bitter hope and grief and furor of their lives; something made more because it was shared among them than the sum of its-- or their-- parts.

Yes, they _all_ would have more whelps. Many and _many_.

As the two paths in Ravga's mind forked again and a plan rose to greet her on the battle-road, she clutched the spine-hilted skull-dagger, still tacky with blood and spinal fluid. “You could help?” She croaked to the forbidding blackness under the wall, but received no answer. She hadn't expected one. She didn't blame them; they did not have battleminds like she did.

Trembling, groaning with effort and pain, she rose to her feet and shifted left, away from her sisters' hiding place and toward the border between living quarters and lab. Ismar let out a booming, derisive laugh. “Oh, _look at you_ , little Impure, playing at heroics! Well, let's see what that gets you, eh?” Ismar dropped to all fours. Her horns, curled much like Ravga's, hooded her skull and brows in a broad plate of impenetrable armor. But those did not concern Ravga. The single horn she'd inherited from her mother, which stuck out like a stubby, bloodstained lance from the middle of her forehead, did. Ravga filled her bruised lungs, stopping short of capacity when her broken ribs twanged. The breath, though of the same stale, old air she'd been breathing her entire life, cooled the feverish pain in her and cleared the grey from the edges of her vision. Her head ached; her slit thigh stung; knives tweaked her ribs; her own whelp bled itself out in an aching red fury from her belly, but those things were in another place. The path before her was true. It led, above all things, to Ismar's end.

Ismar snarled, slammed her fists on the ground, charged. As she had with the stalkling, Ravga braced herself against the stone and when the wave of Ismar's broad back broke, she launched herself forward like a pouncing cat. Up and over Ismar's head she sailed, and landed already sprinting around the bend in the stone wall.

Ismar's howl of rage drew a sharptoothed grin from her as she reached the crystal-dagger door of Dictatious' lab. She tucked her head and rammed it like a charging bull. It shattered, some of the fragments piercing her hide and stinging, but those pains were in another place.

Dictatious' lab was an orderly parade of rooms hewn into a section of the Darklands with more light and softer stone. The walls here were smooth and square, and the veins of eldritch green light were broad. Despite its more pleasing appearance, loathing for this place was deeply tucked into the folds of Ravga's brain.

Suffering lived here, in machines with impossibly smooth silvery sides, brought from the world above. A final breaking waited here; sooner or later they would crack her and there would not be enough pain or rage or strength or magic elixir to mend her. Ravgasbane sulked here, in every injection Dictatious gave her, in every node he stuck on her skull, in every enchanted stone he placed on her belly.

But there was one room in particular-- the very reason why Lord Gunmar used her and her sisters-- that Ravga hated, and it was toward this room that she hurtled herself.

Before she found it, though, she veered into a small dim room in which vials of dully glowing liquid sat in orderly rows on three long stone tables. She grabbed two in the hand that did not hold the skull-dagger.

The room she wanted lay down the hallway. Large enough for Ismar to cross in two strides, its only native apparatus was a wide glass eye on a thin metallic stick. The eye never closed, but its lens was dim now. Ravga skidded into the room, a snarl unconsciously peeling her lips back as she approached the eye-thing. She took the dagger in her teeth again, gripped the handles on the side of the eye and aimed it at the entrance. Ismar's pursuit shook feathers of dust down from the ceiling. She held the eye in place with one hand, also gently grasping the vials, and reached behind her for the circular dial set into the wall. Ismar rounded the corner and Ravga wrenched the dial all the way over.

White light screamed into the room, bright enough to burn Ravga's eyes through her tightly closed lids.

Ismar's tortured shriek rattled the room, loud enough to fill Ravga's head with static though her tightly pinned ears. She smelled Ismar's charring flesh before she heard it, and it lit her up with savage joy. She risked opening her eyes to slits and saw nothing but a hulking shape rolling in the brightness. Ismar's claws screeched on stone as she scrambled desperately back into the relative darkness of the hallway. Ravga dropped the eye but did not turn it off, and darted after her. It sagged on its stalk but did not totally fall, so Ravga was momentarily bathed in it. It barely stung her broad back.

Ismar half-sat, half-lay in the hallway, shrieking and pawing at her smoking hide. Ravga traded the vials for the dagger in her hand and vaulted in a graceful arc which landed her expertly on Ismar's leather-banded chest. With all of her strength, she plunged the scooped blade into the Trollsbane high on her right breast, between her pectoral plate and shoulder. Her screams redoubled, and the stink of charred meat filled Ravga's nose.

In her mad flailings, Ismar caught Ravga with a mighty swipe of her paw and flung her down the hallway. Ravga rolled to her feet and reached behind her for a stalkling scale, but her hand found only hair, one whole horn, and one sheared-off one. She hissed and backed as Ismar gained her feet and her wits. She gazed down at the stalkling skull sticking out of her chest.

_You're dead Ismar you're dead when will you realize you're dead_

Ismar flicked her searing blue eyes up at Ravga. “I'm done playing, Impure,” she growled, and charged before Ravga could spit the vials out into her hand to throw them.

Ravga dashed down the hallway, turning once, twice. The halls led her out of the lab the back way. As she passed it, she punched another dial. This one controlled the crystal spikes that formed the back door to the lab. Seconds later, Ismar burst through them with a great crash and projectiles of glowing amber stone flew past Ravga's ears.

Back out in the breeders' chamber, Ravga ran a wide loop as far away from her sisters' hiding place as possible. If the stuff in the vials did what she thought it did, she wanted to be as far away from them as possible.

“ _Impure! I'll slit your belly open and eat that abortion of a whelp you carry! I'll wear your spine as my crown! I'll pull your guts out and feed you your own shit before I kill you!”_

Ismar's bellow broke around the edges. She pawed at the dagger and yanked it out. Velvet-black blood welled from the gape and slopped down her chest. She walked haltingly, her flesh made crackly and tight by the punishing dose of false sunlight.

Ismar's body was wounded, but so was her pride. It made her dangerous, but it made her _stupid._

“You _said_ you were done playing,” Ravga shouted. “Where's your sword? Pick it up and kill me!”

Ismar glanced around. Ravga hadn't known when she'd lost it, and by Ismar's visible confusion, neither did she. Using the distraction she'd created, she hurled the vials at Ismar with all her might.

They exploded in a rapid-fire _CRACKRACK_ around Ismar's head, obscuring it in a cloud of dirty smoke. Ismar roared, but the putrid smoke filling her lungs ended the sound in an impotent gagging cough. Ravga backpedaled, braced against the wall like a runner, and sped forward. The upper curve of Ismar's left horn parted the dense hot smoke around her head, and Ravga leaped for it.

Hooking both hands around the curve of Ismar's horn, she let her momentum swing her as she yanked brutally downward. Ismar roared in rage and shock as she went down, and they landed together: Ismar on her back; Ravga on her feet.

With all her might, Ravga hammered her heel down into Ismar's neck, the only unprotected spot between her armored chest and her face protected by her horns. Ismar issued a choking bark, her crystal blue eyes bulging.

“I know what you are, Ismar,” Ravga shouted, and plunged three claws into Ismar's wound. “You call _me_ filth, but _you're_ the impure one!”

Ismar howled and swung at Ravga, who ducked and twisted her fingers in the wound. Rolling and bellowing like the wounded beast she was, Ismar flung Ravga from her. She skidded on all fours, teeth bared, yellow eyes flashing, muscles singing with battlefire.

“You hunt us and kill our whelps because you're _jealous_ of us!”

Ismar heaved herself to her feet, a deadly-deep growl rolling in her chest and her eyes trailing wisps of blue aether.

“It's _you_ who secretly wants Lord Gunmar to seed _you_! You're nothing but a snubbed child throwing a _tantrum_!” Ravga shrieked.

Ismar lumbered toward her, on all fours, slow and ungainly at first, but rage lent her speed and sure feet. Ravga bolted. They were coming to the end of it now, she knew, because even unwounded, she could not outrun the Trollsbane.

Now there was only the one path in her mind, and now the end was in sight.

Now she had to end it, even if it meant her end as well. She would pluck out Ismar's eyes, plunge her hands into the holes, twist her fists in Ismar's brain, she would--

Her cut leg stumbled her, and her momentum sent her spinning. Ismar's jaws closed around her leg. Ravga had no time to scream before Ismar's teeth sheared through Ravga's leg and side, driving all thought from her on a shockwave of pain. Squealing like a wild thing, she whipsawed her body up and drove her claws into the blazing blue pit of Ismar's eye.

Ismar's volcanic roar rattled her brain in her skull. Reflexively she snatched Ravga by the neck and pitched her away. Before Ravga had finished rolling Ismar was upon her like a gored bull, her mother-horn spearing Ravga's chest high on her right side. All of Ravga's rage and strength and breath flew out of her on the last breathy shriek she could manage. Ismar whipped her head and sent Ravga skidding bonelessly across the stone.

She fetched up against a sloped wall, rolled down, lay still, sucked breath into lungs that felt clamped shut, and waited for death.

Ismar's thundering gallop ended in a hissing spray of stone which showered Ravga with tiny stings.

“F...Father,” Ismar stuttered breathlessly.

“I turned a blind eye once before, daughter,” a voice boomed in the deep directly above her head. “But the other sees. All.”

The edge against which she languished slid out from under her, and somewhere in the heavy black agony that was Ravga, she knew she had come to rest at her lord's very feet. _On_ them.

She could not reach up to him. She spoke his name, but the only thing that issued from her mouth was a frothy gurgle of blood.

Gunmar's presence turned from her. She whimpered. Blood streamed down her cheek.

_No don't go my Lord don't_

Daughter's footsteps followed in father's wake, away from her into silence.

Smaller, friendlier hands interrupted her despair as they hoisted one side of her. Firecrackers of pain went off in her but her groan came out a breathless wheeze. A familiar voice sounded by her ear. “ _Tsk_. One of you, come help me, for Gunmar's sake.”

Another pair of hands lifted her. They carried her a while, then lay her down on something hard and flat and cold.

“Well, it could have been worse,” Dictatious said through miles of buzzy fuzzy blackness. “You've still got the one working lung, and the other will heal. The youngling is a blood-match. And good news, Greenhorn, we can even regrow this.” Something metallic tinked against her broken horn.

Ravga was not too far gone to hear the gravity behind the false cheer in Dictatious' voice; the gravity that meant there was something he could not regrow.


End file.
